GenZ teaches about Shoah

Holocaust survivors and college students get together at a GenZ meeting. (Submitted photo )

December 23, 2013|By David A. Schwartz, Staff Writer

A new organization is targeting college students from Generation Z (persons born in 1985 or later) to teach them about the Holocaust.

GenZ, a project of Boca Raton-based Next Generations, is bringing college students and Holocaust survivors together in workshops and presentations. It will approach high school students through BBYO chapters later.

"You find and learn a story and tell that story through expression," said Eric Donner, a 52-year-old financial advisor from Highland Beach in south Palm Beach County who founded the GenZ Project 15 months ago after going to a Café Europa luncheon in Boca Raton and seeing 500 Holocaust survivors.

Students tell survivors' stories in poem, song, short story or other "story expression," Donner said. GenZ posts the students' stories on its Facebook page. It plans to build a website that will have a gallery of story expressions and art.

Donner said he wants to see students stand up among their generation and spread the word about the Holocaust, genocide and bullying.

GenZ is at Palm Beach State College and Florida Atlantic University, both in Boca Raton, Nova Southeastern University in Davie and Quinnipiac University near New Haven, Conn. It also is in Tel Aviv and London.

"I thought it would be a good match," said Nancy Dershaw, Next Generations founder and president, adding that she thought the GenZ Project would bring younger, emerging leaders into the organization and get them involved with Holocaust survivors.

"There's nothing like this that's really targeting our generation," said Alexandra "Sasha" Krawczk, a junior at the University of Central Florida in Orlando who heard about GenZ when she was a student at FAU.

Abraham Mercado, a film and Jewish studies major at FAU, made a short video about GenZ and is finishing another.

The first video, "GenZ Project: the Why," which can be viewed on YouTube.com, has interviews with Holocaust survivors and shows them interacting with students.

The second video, "GenZ Project: the How," will show a Holocaust survivor meeting with three GenZers and creating stories in art, music and film, Mercado said.

A program "ambassador," Mercado invites students to join GenZ. He said it is critical for the organization to be on college campuses. "I've seen anti-Semitism that has grown on college campuses," he said. "Hidden behind it is anti-Israel [sentiment]."

Mercado identifies with the survivors and thinks it would be easy to have another Holocaust. "You see how survivors' lives went from completely normal to being in concentration camps. Jewish businesses were boycotted," he said. "We show stories of the Holocaust and what hatred can do and why there is no room for it."

He added, "It's up to us to really educate our peers on other college campuses and around the world."

GenZ is "really in with the young people and they're very devoted to it. There's certain energy about them," said Norman Frajman, 84, of Boynton Beach, president of Child Survivors/Hidden Children of the Holocaust Palm Beach County.

Frajman said the students want to learn about the Holocaust and acquaint everyone with what happened. "They must learn now while the survivors are still alive," he said.